Tuesday’s hearing on treatment fraud comes on the heels of letters sent in November to the top substance abuse officials in half a dozen states, including Florida, asking for information on how they were handling patient brokering.

Citing coverage by The Palm Beach Post and other media outlets, those letters were triggered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ response to the committee’s first inquiry this summer about oversight of patient brokering.

The federal health agency’s answer: Every state does it differently.

Florida’s Department of Children and Families, which oversees substance abuse in Florida, replied that it had closed just five bogus sober homes in the past year.

Yet Aronberg’s office has arrested 41 people linked to sober home fraud in the past year in Palm Beach County alone involving seven sober home and addiction treatment facilities.

Joining Aronberg and Johnson were Eric Gold, office of the Massachusetts attorney general; Pete Nielsen, chief executive of the California Consortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals; and Douglas Tieman, CEO of Caron Treatment Centers, which is based in South Florida and Pennsylvania.

All, said U.S. Rep. Greg Harper, are “on the front lines of this issue.”

Oversight of rogue operators has been stymied by federal law designed to protect patients from discrimination, said Aronberg, including the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act. For instance, Florida lawmakers won’t make certification of sober homes mandatory because they are afraid of running afoul of those acts.

The same concerns have slowed efforts by Palm Beach County cities from enacting oversight and regulations, Aronberg said. He suggested Congress clarify the laws to allow more regulation.

Long the nation’s addiction treatment capital, Palm Beach County also has emerged as a hotbed of sober home fraud.

Sober homes are houses where people looking to recover in a sober environment live together. That’s the goal.

The reality, Aronberg told the subcommittee, is that the majority of sober homes in this county are little more than flophouses. Drug use in such homes may be common.

The results can be tragic.

In 2016, Palm Beach County Fire Rescue alone responded to 4,661 opioid overdoses, said Johnson, and 552 of them were fatal. “Many, if not most of the calls, were to sober homes,” he said.